Winter 2009

Martha Heinemann Bixby / Flickr

This January has been one of the warmest on record in the District of Columbia. Some days the weather has felt closer to the first jubilant days of spring than the dead of winter (no matter what the White House tweets). And, as WJLA reports, D.C. hasn’t even seen one full inch of snowfall yet.

This month, only 0.2″ fell at Washington National Airport, barely surpassed by December’s 0.4″ snowfall, adding to just over half an inch in total. That’s six inches less than D.C. has typically seen by this point in the season, per WJLA.

While D.C. received hardly a dusting, some states had their heaviest snowstorms in over a decade. The Weather Channel reports that the Mid-Atlantic region has been just out of reach of some heavy winter storms that dumped more than 20 inches of snow in parts of the Northeast last month. Albany had its eighth biggest snow storm ever. Not so for the D.C area.

National Weather Service meteorologist Ray Martin says that it is unusual to go quite this far with so little snow—the D.C. area has only seen such a delay 12 times. With the cold air remaining in the western states over the past two months, the area could end up “pretty snowless” this winter.

“It’s also possible that we could get some big storms,” Martin says. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but the way the weather patterns are looking, the odds are not good.”

The least-snowy winters on record in D.C. were during 1997-1998 and 1972-1973, which dropped a measly 0.1 inches. And, according to WJLA, the District’s latest inch of snowfall was recorded in 2013, when the first inch didn’t fall until March 25th.

While the lag in heavy snowfall might feel concerning, it’s worth noting that it’s not unprecedented—in the 2016-2017 winter season, for example, D.C. didn’t reach one inch of snow until January 30, per the Weather Channel. And, according to Martin, the area typically gets most of its snowfall in February and March.

Still, this has been the 10th warmest January ever, with an average temperature of 42.7 degrees, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting another Snowzilla any time soon. The high next week? 61 degrees.

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